A New Horizon: Moving In…

Moving in…

So, it’s been a mess.

This summer has been super busy for this nest; between moving, the showhouse, clients, family and (obviously) vacay’s, needless to say our #anewhorizon has been on the backburner a bit. But all of that is changing now, however, we wanted to share what we walked into.

In fact, we had so much to do, and so many boxes to unpack. Not only that, but we needed to repaint every single room in the house, get it cleaned, and start with a blank palate. (Anyone else do that?) Moving in has been a bit more than we expected.

It took us a little bit of time, a lot of moving every piece of furniture from room to room (about 4-6 times) for us to start to feel like home, but finally, life is starting to settle down.

This was our view the first few days (OK weeks, and maybe still to this day):

Day One

We closed on the houses June 4th, and we ended up moving everything out of our houses, and driving some items down to the new house. We weren’t expecting the movers to come and unload much, other than our mattresses to sleep on. But around 7pm, we were officially in our new house, setting up our family beds (4 mattresses lined up together) in our “big room” (aka the family room, or “lodge”). What made this even more exciting was the complete lack of cell signal and cable.

Luckily the kids are pretty creative and had no idea we had no modern conveniences.

Day Two

What a sight! This was the first wake up in the new house, and we had to document it. August has no idea.

The day we were moving in. Pretty much the, “oh shit” day. Three large moving vans, filled with furniture, accessories, dishes and more made there way onto our circular drive. We just stood there watching the moving vans as they arrived, wondering what in the world we just did.

Odette having her first breakfast in the house, with a bewildered look on her face. Me wondering, did we make the right move?

Eventually we got our acts together, and helped the movers place furniture in the various rooms throughout the house. But the real fun started around 3pm. Kim and I started walking around the house with a look on our face that basically said, “we’re not that happy.” Why? Well, where we initially placed all of our furniture looked terrible. Between the existing paint on the walls (the grays from before, although nice, clashed with our furnishings), dust and dirt on the floor, and harsh summer sun coming through the windows really made everything look bad.

Like real bad. Like to the point we scratched our heads wondering if this was a good move.

But, we moved on. We got to the point about what was really bothering us, and realized that:

1. We needed to paint the walls white, like ASAP.

2. We needed to move the furniture that the movers had already placed.

Yes, we know. So, Kim and I started to move everything around, and if it didn’t work? Then, we would find another place for it because that’s what needed to happen. Design Hubby was out and about, and had NO IDEA that we were even on this mission. If he knew how sad we were, he really would have been devastated, so time to get things together.

After an hour or so, we started to feel a lot more settled. Well, until the third moving van was unloaded.

Day Three

Let’s paint. Yep, Benjamin Moore’s White Dove to the rescue. At this point the bedrooms had been painted upstairs, and we were working on the rooms downstairs. Life was starting to feel a bit more settled. Comcast even came over to connect us to life. Needless to say, moving in left us a bit bewildered and confused, but we got our acts together.

Every day since then…

We’ve been waking up happy, and working on our plan to make this house OUR home, and how we can best leave our mark on every single surface. So far, plans include: a new kitchen, french doors and patio to connect the kitchen to the outdoors, adding on a new master bedroom suite, and that doesn’t even include all the exciting outdoor landscaping we are dreaming of.

Needless to say, we’ve taken our time to assess what works and what doesn’t work in this new house, held some tag sales, and searched high and low for the right pieces of furniture. We are now in the throes of getting our wallpaper up, and the infrastructure set before we make the real exciting changes.